Adhering to readily available Safe Work Australia guidance would have helped a PCBU prevent an incident where a worker fell through a penetration after mistaking its cover for spare plywood, a court has found in convicting and fining the business $450,000.
An appeals court has quashed a ruling that the WHS prosecution of a major company was invalid because of the process used to delegate the applicable regulatory powers. Meanwhile, a play centre has been charged with multiple safety breaches after a child fell seven metres.
Another employer has been fined for workplace health and safety breaches affecting children, with its failures including not maintaining a safe supervision ratio of employees to customers.
The fine imposed on an employer that failed to fully implement a mandatory safety measure, because it ran out of the required materials, has been increased more than five-fold on appeal, with a judge stressing penalties must be significant enough to dissuade others from "cutting corners".
Employers must apply the hierarchy of controls to the hazards associated with height work, which starts with not performing any such work where reasonably practicable, a regulator has advised in launching a major blitz.
A PCBU should have ensured the safety procedures in its paper systems were put into practice and checked and maintained, to prevent a worker being pinned between a wall and a crane load, a court has found.
A company and its director have been fined $420,000, after the latter identified serious safety issues at a site but failed to act to prevent a worker's seven-metre fall. Another PCBU has already been fined $300,000 over the fall.
A PCBU that has been battling fatality-related WHS charges for three years has had a minor victory in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, which agreed to vary the adverse publicity order against the business.